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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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Any postage scale will work. If you were closer I'd give you one. I'd just go to the local head shop and pick one up unless you're wanting to weigh hot metal. Then a laboratory triple beam or industrial toledo brand scale would be the thing. 

Pnut

 

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I took my first hook out of the vinegar bath and scrubbed it down with a wire brush in a pail of water, hung it out to dry, wire brushed it with the bench mount slow speed wire brush and dipped/wiped it with BLO and hung it on a wire in the shop---4 more to go!

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Did it yesterday evening and not today. It is the WI cross I made a few days ago. Cut a little off each end of the vertical bar to make the proportions right and etched it. 
 

It still looks a lot like something a child would hand his mom to pin to the front of the fridge, but a little less than before. I may try heating it back up and driving the horizontal bar in toward the vertical bar. It would at least make the gaps on the back less visible. 
 

One thing I hadn’t considered when beginning this is the wire I wrapped it with would weld to the cross. You can see it on the back. 

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Honestly, the wire looks kind of cool, and if you made it look intentional, it could form an interesting pattern (not on this one specifically but if you were to revisit it). There may be some flaws, but it still looks pretty darn good in my opinion, and I think you should try and give yourself more credit. The back may look not the greatest, but you only need one good side, the other can be placed strategically against a wall.

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I finally took on one of the projects I've wanted to do since I took up smithing. I always wanted to make my own hammer. After the claw hammer and the small mechanics cross peen I had the confidence to try a rounding hammer. I decided to make the flat side square and the rounding side round for easy reference when using it. It came out weighing 2.6lbs and the eye is a little crooked. But for a first attempt I'm pretty satisfied!

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Nice looking hammer. I have yet to make a hammer, but I index the faces by making one side of the handle flat and the other just slightly convex. I also carve the top of the handle flat and the bottom somewhat round (Top and bottom being in relation to the face I expect to use most.) If cut in half it would look something like a D.  Someone here said they did that quite a while ago and I tried it and liked it. I don’t have to look at the hammer to orient the face. I can focus on what I am working on.

 

Thanks, Nathan. It isn’t finished. I had thought I would rivet it to a copper or brass cross and then wood beneath that. But now I think I will try to forge a little larger Celtic cross from WI instead of brass or copper. I am still thinking I will go with bois d’arc under that. But who knows. 

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Nice looking hammer Cannon Cocker. How does it feel on hot steel?

3 hours ago, DHarris said:

Someone here said they did that quite a while ago and I tried it and liked it.

I may not be THE guy you remember but I've been shaping my hammer handles that way for years and have described it here often.  Flat towards the face and rounded to the pein side, like a D. :)

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks DHarris and frosty. I remember reading a conversation between frosty and Jennifer about shaping handles that way. Since this handle was just slightly larger than comfortable anyways I decided to give your method a go. It feels good in my hand but I'll know for sure once I put it to work later today. I got my hands on some good coal so I'm on my way out to the farm to grab my coal forge and a couple of extra propane tanks that I'm exchanging for o/a bottles. Hopefully I'll have something else to post on here this afternoon!

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